Happy Birthday, Fanciulla: World Premiere at the Met

By buniverse ()

La Fanciulla del West, Puccini's best, least-known opera, recently turned 100. The rollicking spaghetti Western — which takes place during the California Gold Rush — premiered December 10, 1910, at New York City’s Metropolitan [...]Opera. But despite its initial success, it didn't prove to be as popular as La Bohème, Tosca, or Madama Butterfly.

In celebration of the opera’s centennial, Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, in conjunction with the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, hosted “Fanciulla 100: Celebrating Puccini,” a symposium that featured numerous musical experts and historians, including pianist Carolyn Guzski, an assistant professor of musicology at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and winner of the Barry Brook Award.

In the video above, Guzski describes the events leading up to the Met’s world premiere of Fanciulla. “The premiere represented the culmination of a comprehensive reassessment of the theater’s repertoire,” she says.

An intricate undertaking nearly a decade in the making, the process involved major changes to the theater’s management structure — a situation that continues to color the Met’s stance toward opera even now.

Hosted by the College of Fine Arts and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center on December 6, 2010.
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